


silver fucking platter

by Anonymous



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: (can you call it that if they're real ppl), Character Study, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Referenced/implied frerard, Touring, Which tour? idk i don't go here enough to tell you, it doesn't rly matter anyway, sorry mom i wrote the rpf :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27982665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Gerard tells Mikey, “I haven’t had a drink in a few weeks,” which, while not technically a lie, resembles the truth the same way as when he, age thirteen, told his mother he hadn’t stolen her cigarettes when he’d really stolen five bucks from her purse to pay the old guy who always sat on a blanket in front of the 7-Eleven to buy a pack for him.Years of addiction teaches you to be selectively honest about the specifics and vague about the rest.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Gerard Way & Mikey Way
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Gerard

**Author's Note:**

> tw: eating disorders and reference to past alcohol/drug abuse.
> 
> this is my first time writing rpf like this and i feel ill-equipped to actually handle these characters, so bare that in mind. there really isn't an excuse or reason for this fic, so... read and be sad I guess.

The piercing racket of two low voices right outside the bus window—an argument escalating to a fight— rouses Gerard from his first good sleep in weeks. Initially he shuts his eyes and pulls the thin blanket back over his head to try and find that peace again—he hadn’t even been dreaming—but then one of the voices reaches a critical volume, and he knows by the timbre of the grunt and the hoarse, mocking tone of the response it gets that the voices belong to Bob and Frank. And, well, no way he can fall back asleep now. The thin sheets of metal separating the inside and outside of the bus never manage to be as soundproof as they want them to be.

But the world waits a little longer for his reappearance into the waning daylight as he keeps the curtain closed tight and curls up in his bunk like a little kid, on his side, knees tucked under his chin, like he used to do when him and Mikey fell asleep in bed watching movies together and his kid brother, always so goddamn lanky, laid diagonal, leaving barely a corner for Gerard even though it was his bed. His bunk is dark and cold enough that he almost feels like he’s back home, waking up in the middle of the night during the New Jersey winter because Mikey stole all of the covers and they forgot to shut the window all the way after smoking.

“—your fucking problem!” Bob shouts. A third voice, unidentifiable at such a low level, tells him something short, and after that Gerard doesn’t hear Bob anymore. He must have stormed off towards the bar, or the trees surrounding the festival grounds, or wherever Bob goes when he’s mad and wants to be alone.

Frank retreats, too, until his loud muttering disappears.

The subtle vibration of the wall a few inches from his face tells Gerard that the third person is leaning against the outside of the bus. Gerard places a hand flat against the black carpet material there and he swears he can feel the other person breathe. Then the sensation stops and a few seconds later, a door opens and someone steps into the bus, sighing and taking heavy steps past the bunks to the small lounge in the back.

It’s Mikey, of course. They’ve lived together, breathed the same air, for so long that Gerard’s ears recognize the rhythm of his brother’s gait even when he couldn’t identify Mikey’s voice. So Gerard kicks the blanket off his legs and rubs a hand over his face. Mikey will know whether or not the argument was something they need to address before their show tonight, and, if it is, he’ll know what Gerard has to say to fix it.

The light stings his eyes as he rolls out of his bunk and pulls himself upright in the hallway to join Mikey, who sips from a water bottle and acknowledges his brother with an acute nod.

“Sleeping?” asks Mikey.

Gerard throws himself down on the couch across from Mikey and yawns so hard he coughs. “Was until Bob and Frankie got into it.”

“Sorry.”

Gerard shrugs. On the table sits an open Diet Coke that might have been his, so he picks it up and sniffs it to make sure that it’s only Diet Coke inside, and when he can’t smell anything stronger, takes a sip. Yeah, only flat, room temperature soda. The drink simultaneously soothes and aggravates the fire at the back of his throat. “What set them off this time?”

“I don’t know. Same stuff as always, I guess. Frank’s still feeling sick, and you know how they argue. It’s, like, restlessness, I think.”

Sure it is. In the lives they lead exists a million different reasons to give yourself completely to any emotion of your choice. Joy? Look out into the crowd of thousands of people who all love you and showed up here for _you,_ because they think that your music changed the world for the better. Sorrow? Call up your mom, your girl, your drug dealer in New Jersey who you haven’t seen in four months and tell them the tour has been extended by six weeks. Anger? No shortage of reasons to get angry. You’re sick of your bandmates, you’re sick of your songs, you’re sick of someone else controlling where you go and when you go there, and you thought that when you changed the world, the world would look a lot more, well, _changed_.

“Yeah, but you heard what they were saying, right, you know what they were arguing about?” Gerard presses on. “Because, like, if they’re gonna be weird about it tonight then maybe I should know.”

“I don’t think so,” Mikey says as he fiddles with the wrapper on his water bottle. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead because the combination of their summer tour of the American Southwest and uneven air conditioning have rendered this part of the bus a swamp. “But I wasn’t there when it started. So I don’t know. Really.”

Gerard just stares at his brother for a few seconds, unrelenting, while his stomach twists. When Mikey continues to dodge his gaze and shift in his seat, the root of his equivocation dawns on Gerard just as he was ready to stop guessing.

“They were fighting about me?” Gerard holds his voice steady and careful. “What about me?”

Mikey bites his lip and then drinks the last of the water. He keeps the plastic bottle in his hands, twisting the cap back and forth and spinning the band around the neck. “Gee, come on. Don’t—Bob and Frank, they…” He sighs and appears to be in physical pain. “Bob thinks that you’re, like, not doing good. Again. He told Frank that they need to—they probably should go to someone, you know, to help you, uh, pull it together, he said.”

Mikey pauses a moment and Gerard says, “So they, what, disagreed about where to hold my intervention? Which rehab to stick me in?”

“Gee…”

“Mikey.”

“Just, maybe think about…” Mikey shakes his head as though he were erasing lines from an Etch A Sketch. “Frank thought, I guess, maybe there was, like, a different way to, you know, go about it. So, Bob kind of… put it on him.”

There it is, on a silver fucking platter: any emotion of his choice, readymade for submersion and fixation. Humiliation, Anger, Relief. But what to choose for the main course? Humiliation because he couldn’t hide as easily as he hoped? Relief because someone finally noticed? Anger because, once again, the world won’t just let him self-destruct in peace?

He moves forward with anger in the end because he can express resentment without it sounding like a confession. “What does _that_ mean? Put it on—like I’m _his_ responsibility now? Fuck that. I don’t need to be fucking _watched_ like I’m a little kid or something. And not from fucking Frank.”

Gerard tells himself that if it were anyone else other than Frank he would be just as mad. Rejection is not an emotion he likes to try on.

Mikey darkens and wipes sweat from his brow.

Gerard tells Mikey, “I haven’t had a drink in a few weeks,” which, while not technically a lie, resembles the truth the same way as when he, age thirteen, told his mother he hadn’t stolen her cigarettes when he’d really stolen five bucks from her purse to pay the old guy who always sat on a blanket in front of the 7-Eleven to buy a pack for him.

Years of addiction teaches you to be selectively honest about the specifics and vague about the rest.

Mikey nods. “I know you haven’t.”

Dependence comes in many forms and Gerard never indulged only in drinking. 

“Maybe I can talk with Frankie and Bob before the show,” Gerard offers, an Olive Branch towards a different conversation, towards reassuring his brother of how much he’s okay, how the length of the tour is just taking its usual, expected toll, enough that Mikey forgets that he saw Frank and Bob argue at all. Because Gerard does not intend to _actually_ talk to his band mates about anything.  
  
“That’s probably good,” says Mikey, throwing the twisted, naked, and empty water bottle aside.  
  
“Hey,” Gerard starts, picking up a pear from the center table and taking a bite before he thinks too much, “Wanna order takeout or something before we go on tonight? The stuff they’ve been giving us is, like, completely tasteless to me now. Like, total _Soylent Green_ situation.”  
  
“Gross.” Mikey smiles and they decide to bribe someone to go pick up their Chinese food so it’ll be here for them after the show.  
  
Gerard will have to eat some of it, for sure. He can already feel the cool California summer night air against his skin, hear the eerie whistle of wind whipping against festival tents as he escapes to the public bathrooms.  
  
They talk a little about the festival so far, the other sets they stopped by (only a few for Gerard, many for Mikey) and the most interesting roadie they’ve come across so far (both agree: Benny from Dallas, who, at about seventy, only ever wears big red cowboy boots). Gerard has finished the pear by the time Mikey tells him that he’s supposed to meet Ray and one of his gear contacts soon.  
  
“I’ll see you later, alright?” Mikey says.  
  
Gerard nods. “I’m gonna call the food in.”  
  
And then Mikey stands up and walks to the front of the bus, looking so fucking reassured that it hurts. In the moment after Mikey opens the door to leave but before he disappears, the urge to get better, to eat when hunger hits and to not associate the sting of liquor at the back of his mouth with remorse, seizes Gerard with a ferocity that forces his head into his lap just as the door latches behind his brother. Jesus fucking Christ, he wants to be clean. Just doesn’t want to _get_ clean.

Gerard takes in a deep breath and keeps breathing in until his lungs burn and diaphragm trembles. Then he lets the air out and gets himself out of the lounge. The six little bunks mock him as he passes by.

 _(“We gotta stop this, man,”_ Frank had said, right there in his bunk, like they hadn’t spent the last hour wrapped up inside each other, lips chapped and legs shaking from exertion and pleasure. Like his lips weren’t still red and swollen, glistening with spit and cum. Like stopping was fucking simple. Years of addiction teaches you that stopping is never fucking simple.)

“I don’t know why you fucking care, anyway,” Gerard says out loud to Frank’s bunk.

Gerard throws the pear core in the trash and then slams the bathroom door shut because no one can hear it anyway and this time he doesn’t even bother to turn the sink on. He just gets to his knees in front of the toilet and, when he sticks his finger down his throat, lets the numbness hold him like a mother holds a baby.


	2. Frank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back then, when they were deciding whether to forego or keep the festival-provided accommodations, when only a day separated them from the moment Frank, usually attached at the hip with his own fear, told Gerard under the cowardly cover of night that you know how much you mean to me, but he couldn’t sneak down to his bunk to fool around in the dark silence anymore, Frank had been convinced that separate rooms at a hotel would afford Gerard’s escape from him. Maybe, if they stayed on the bus sleeping two inches away from each other, then Gerard couldn’t avoid him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah dude i also don't know why i continued this. but whatever! this one's also depressing.

“I don’t care,” Frank had told his crew, weeks ago, in a moment of post-show exhaustion and overstimulation, “I’d rather sleep in this fucking bus than drive thirty miles for a hotel. Shit, give me a fucking tent and I’ll camp out with all the kids.”

He’d received several blanks stares but ultimately got his way, Ray and Mikey lacking opinions strong enough to counter his vehemence and Gerard too sour with him to speak up and risk entering a conversation. Bob had rolled his eyes and declared Frank a Fucking Idiot—an apt description, he knows now.

Back then, when they were deciding whether to forego or keep the festival-provided accommodations and the tour bus constituted their only source of respite, the thought of leaving that familiar place for another nameless, sterile hotel brought to Frank’s chest an exhaustive fury that clenched his jaw and quickened his heartbeat. He said what he said about the bus and the tent and, for some reason, that day the others chose to listen to him.

Now, though, he might prefer that tent over spending another night in his bunk. The shit he puts his body through finally caught up to him two legs of the tour back, and he overestimated his ability to withstand oppressive heat and a mediocre mattress night after night. The bus always smells like vomit—has since they first hit the road—either because someone before them fucked something up with the carpet or because none of them can hold the amount of liquor expected of a notorious rock band, not anymore. The heat amplifies the smell, hangs it heavy in the air, and, well, Frank could use a little sterility.

But admitting some reliance on comforts unheard of when they were younger, touring in that hideous van (didn’t it have a smell, too? Or was it Gerard’s 1988 two-door Monte Carlo that always smelled like weed?) means acknowledging that time has stolen something—grit and vigor and years—from them. Slowing down means irrelevance and death, and the here and now can’t be the best the universe has to offer, right?

So Frank lies in his bunk, trying to find a lullaby somewhere within the hum of Ray’s battery-powered fan, the creak of Gerard’s mattress above as he, too, wrestles with sleep, the frustrated churn of a bus air conditioning unit on its last legs, the gentle and consistent drone of a million cicadas trying to get laid.

Frank sits up to the extent that the bunk allows and fumbles around for the pack of cigarettes wrapped up in his sheets somewhere. The instant his hand finds the glossy paper package the creak of the bunk above him deepens as Gerard crawls from his bed and lands on the floor with a soft thump. For a foggy three seconds, Frank’s mind fills in the blanks unhelpfully and tells him that Gerard intends to join him before he remembers with a sting that they don’t do that anymore.

While Gerard quietly pulls open the door to the common area, Frank grabs the cigarettes and shoves them into the pocket of his sweatpants, falling back onto his pillow with a defeated and subdued sigh.

Back then, when they were deciding whether to forego or keep the festival-provided accommodations, when only a day separated them from the moment Frank, usually attached at the hip with his own fear, told Gerard under the cowardly cover of night that _you know how much you mean to me, but_ he couldn’t sneak down to his bunk to fool around in the dark silence anymore, Frank had been convinced that separate rooms at a hotel would afford Gerard’s escape from him. Maybe, if they stayed on the bus sleeping two inches away from each other, then Gerard couldn’t avoid him.

Ha. _Fucking Idiot_ is right.

In the end all he did was take away Gerard’s ability to be alone in his thoughts away from Frank, to recalibrate and forgive him. The bus and the band keep them in close quarters like parents who stay together to maintain the appearance of a nurturing household to their church and neighbors when everyone, most of all their child, knows the pain of separation is no match for the pain of watching two people try to put out a house fire with a glass of wine.

Yeah. He and Gerard don’t talk much these days. They don’t. So why does Frank pull back the curtain, plant his feet on the ground, and trace Gerard’s footsteps from the hallway to the common space to the man himself?

Standing in front of the open fridge with wide eyes like his mom caught him stealing money from her purse, Gerard looks as surprised to see Frank as Frank feels to be there. Gerard glances away, casting his gaze, still clouded and uneasy, blankly across the shelves of food and beer (but mostly beer). A perfect interpretation of the dance they’ve been performing these last few weeks, where they only interact if they have to and ignore each other the rest of the time.

Frank clears his throat before Gerard straightens his back and acknowledges him with a miniscule tug of his eyebrows towards each other.

Frank holds up the cigarettes. “Four left in there,” he says, shaking the crumpled pack and making the remaining smokes rattle. “Wanna help me, uh, get rid of them?”

He almost winces, he sounds so stupid. But Gerard just shrugs and nearly slams the refrigerator door shut before following him outside, where the breeze and fresh air release some of the fog from Frank’s brain. The cigarettes help, too. Smoking kills, sure, but so does stress, and on nights like tonight the benefits outweigh any possible harm.

Frank and Gerard lean against the bus, smoking for five minutes before either one speaks a word to the other.

Gerard says, “This is just tobacco, right?”

The cigarettes got a little smushed in Frank’s bunk from a few nights in a row of tossing and turning and, all misshapen and twisted, resemble spliffs.

“Doesn’t have to be,” Frank says before clarifying, “I mean. Yeah, just regular cigarettes. But there’s a joint in my stuff somewhere. If you, like, wanted to light up.”

Gerard hums and takes a long, deep drag, blowing the smoke out in a single, smooth exhale before he tells Frank, “Nah. I’d just get hungry.”

“Nothing good in the fridge?”

“Nothing worth it, anyway.”

Feeling more casual around Gerard than he has in a while, Frank almost forgets how awful they’ve been to each other lately. How, earlier in the night at their show, Gerard sang to Mikey and Ray and the audience the whole time, not even acknowledging when Frank fucked with his mic stand right when he knew Gerard was about to use it. The show finished with Frank angry and hurt and confused because _What the fuck_?

If Bob had been the combative one, then sure, that would have made sense. Bob had nearly punched his lights out when Frank, in a moment of self-preservation, had tried to prevent him from going to management about Gerard’s Newest Issue—which, of course, was little more than Frank’s own recklessness with other people’s hearts.

“Fucking _drop it_ , dude,” Frank had told Bob. They were standing outside the bus in the late afternoon, not far from where he and Gerard stood now. “I told you, it’s my fault, alright? I pissed him off and I can deal with it.”

Bob had turned a deep red. “If you broke it, you fix it, motherfucker! I’m so sick of this shit. Every fucking…” He threw his hands in the air. “Just, whatever. God damn. If you wanna take the blame so bad then take it. Now he’s _your_ fucking problem.”

Then Mikey had intervened and sent them their separate ways. But Frank and Bob had made peace before going on, and, anyway, the drummer can only fuck up the stage dynamics so much.

But for Gerard to be so cold to him tonight after barely speaking for days and playing at least ten shows like normal, like nothing had changed between them? Fucking infuriating. Frank flubbed a few rifts while his hands shook with rage. He wanted to rip the microphone from Gerard’s hands and demand an answer in front of the whole audience, but mostly just wanted their arguments to look like their arguments back in that stuffy fucking attic, bickering about which takes were good enough to put on their first demo, which pizza place they’d order from that night, which dive bar had the best acoustics. Frank would give up his right arm to go back to those potential-drenched nights (they’d felt endless at the time) when, if a mood struck Gerard, Frank could yell until he understood and then wash the argument away with a few shitty beers. But, well, these days a six pack isn’t exactly a peace offering as far as Gerard is concerned.

Gerard finishes his cigarette and drops the butt in the grass, crushing it under his shoe. Frank, already on his second, holds out the last cigarette of the pack in towards Gerard, who just shakes his head. Frank shrugs and pockets the pack, wondering if he should bring up what happened at the show.

The wind lifts a flap of a nearby vendor tent into the air and then drops it abruptly, making a dramatic slapping sound.

Crossing his arms tightly around his stomach, Gerard visibly shivers despite his sweatshirt and the warm night air. “It wasn’t…” He pauses and gazes off into the distance. “Maybe I—Sorry. About being a dick on stage. You didn’t, you know, deserve that, really.”

Frank blinks and needs a moment to collect his thoughts. “Thanks,” he says finally. “I’m—”

“I’m going to the latrine,” Gerard says before Frank can get out another word. “You gonna go to bed?”

Holding up the cigarette, Frank says, “After this.”

Gerard nods firmly and walks away quickly. Frank finishes the cigarette and stomps it into the ground and then, against his better judgement, trails Gerard through the shadowy fairgrounds, so still in the moonlight, frozen in time until tomorrow morning. He doesn’t actually expect to see Gerard entering the public bathrooms, but there he goes.

By the time Frank reaches the door, he’s ready to turn around but then he hears what’s actually happening inside, and how else should he read the coughing, gagging, choking, splashing? Gerard empties his stomach and Frank just _knows_ , can just see the next few months play out before his eyes—the fall, the rock bottom, the improvement, the relapses. So awful and intrusive, for his first thought to be _He’s doing this to himself_. Worse to be sure he’s right.

Frank slumps against the outside wall and sinks into a squat in the grass while the world rearranges itself around him and Gerard pukes and gags.

It’s one of those moments when you realize that you just left behind the Before and are inching smoothly into the After. Like when your wife sits you down and says she isn’t happy anymore, that you aren’t giving enough of yourself to her. The world shifts. You tell the person who does share your life that you can’t anymore—can’t share your life—aware the whole time that the words leaving your mouth echo Jamia’s in the worst and most invasive way possible. Like a car crash that takes your leg. Before and after. Then a few days pass under this horrible haze, and you realize in the middle of the night that she fundamentally altered your reality with a few practiced sentence but she’s known for weeks or more, probably, how she felt and what she would say.

Why doesn’t anyone ever fucking say anything? Why does anyone bother to say anything at all? Like Gerard right now, puking his guts out after eating five bites of cold beef and broccoli for dinner.

Frank wonders if, like last time, Gerard will spiral and spiral and then crash and burn and they will just have to watch him, warm their hands in the flames of their friend’s self-destruction. An addict is an addict is an addict, and so Frank lifts himself from the ground and, jaw clenched so tight it trembles, and walks right back to the bus where he’ll continue to dodge questions from Bob about Gerard’s well-being and scream into his pillow at night as though his throat weren’t already hoarse.

When you love an addict you’re supposed to wait for them to come back to you. So Frank won’t sleep tonight, will just wait, nails drawing blood where they dig into his palms, until Gerard comes back and Frank realizes the source of the vomit smell. If Gerard asked to join him in bed right now Frank would throw aside the blanket, pull him in, hold him like a mother holds her baby, but no such request is made.

So Frank keeps waiting. He waits for morning to come, waits for the tour to end, waits for Gerard to hurt himself just enough to learn to know better so they can finally pick him up and bring him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading ~ i wanted to explore control a little in this one. the world is a disorienting place and it's hard to feel like you have control over yourself, much less other people. much much less when they're hurting themselves. so i hope i captured that. 
> 
> pls leave a comment if you feel so inclined. i do read them <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading ~ sorta the main thing i was going for here was to show how much an ed takes over your life, that it's an addiction like any substance abuse problem. like an addiction, it never really goes away. you just get better at not responding to ed impulses. and it's fucking hard to make the choice to stop once you start. so yeah. i've been recovered for a few years now and it's still hard. and i wanted to convey that and maybe also indulge in my pain a little bit. 
> 
> leave a comment if you'd like.


End file.
